The Light of Love
Hafiz Saheb, from maudlin sentimentality you rescue me,
Like the Saba breeze you speak of, you blow through me.
Fresh vigour rises in the heart – you breathe on love's flame,
It bursts into a new life and behold, I am back in the game.
The great game, the only game that is worth the candle;
The game of living with love that only a lover can handle.
Away with calculation and with that foxy insincerity,
Welcome the love that thrives on longing and intensity.
Welcome to the loving that is really my very life blood.
The Beloved is the true light that into my heart did flood.
Whoever, whatever, that light shines on, appears to me,
As the beloved, but that beloved is something temporary.
The true Beloved is the light that one ignites in my heart,
Hafiz Saheb thank you, from that love may I never depart.
Loyalty
Marcus' remarks in his notebook are pure gold,*
The essence of the Roman Empire he displays
If Rudyard's deep poem we happen to unfold,**
The essence of the British Empire he portrays.
If we look we can find some God given quality,
At any country's heart, beneath its worldly corruption.
In each life's book there is also a kernel of purity,
To follow that is loyalty to our Maker and our nation.
In the true hadiths that we are graciously given,
The essence of the Islamic Empire we can discover.
In Allah's words that in the holy Qur'an are written,
The essence of the Empire of Man we can uncover.
*Marcus Aurelias – The Golden Notebook
** Rudyard Kipling - If
Rain
There is a fine rain falling from heaven constantly,
The rain of God's Mercy that the clay eye can't see;
Sometimes He gives it substance in the rain we know,
That washes away the dust we raised inadvertently.
Desire
A man's desire for a woman can be,
Seeking the divine in femininity;
Or the way to a licensed animality.
Between the two lies the discovery,
Of the nature of his own humanity.
I Came to Know
Today I came to know who writes this poetry.
It is You of course, You are the Poet in me;
Or to put it even more succinctly,
It is written down by me,
But its delivery,
You oversee.
It sounds like the purest kind egocentricity,
To say that everything is within me,
But to speak really honestly,
How else can it be,
If You are me?
Cloud Dream
The idea of souls sitting on a cloud is a cause for levity,
The stuff of childhood dreams, so it must be imaginary?
About this absorbing thought I could say a whole lot more,
But my sleepy friends, above the earth can your soul soar?
Father Christmas
Father Christmas of course every adult knows is just fantasy,
And in case they might feel tempted to consider his reality,
They try their very best to be grounded in sordid materiality.
I say he is both real and unreal, thus stake my claim to lunacy.
Pleasure
Personal pleasure is the bait that keeps the world going,
Longing for the divine pleasure keeps heaven turning;
To the highest calling aspire – and only love itself serve,
Burn in love's fire selfish low desires, and love deserve.
Eat to Work
Food comes with energy for the body,
Sleep comes and refreshes the psyche;
If you're fed and rested its time for work,
Believer, the duty of labour do not shirk.
Truth seeks you out to keep you company,
Destroys the enemy inside however prickly.
Love comes now and surrounds you quietly,
Lover do not refrain but surrender quickly.
Then love is your food, and faith your drink,
So do what love demands, don’t even blink.
Nor pause to think, even for a moment,
Though love is both joy and a torment.
When full and rested in loves company,
Your work is whatever love may decree.
Love Said 'Be'
Lover and beloved exist because Love said 'Be',
They are but a stopover on the return journey,
'Journey', 'lover', 'beloved' say what you please
What has love to do with things such as these?
Rhymes and patterns, may please mind or heart,
Love pays no heed to the finest works of art.
Lines and colours may excite the earthly eye,
Tunes please the ear, or make imaginations fly;
The elegance and fascination of a young beauty,
May gain adoration or even provoke cupidity;
But what has love to do with things like these?
Heart, intellect and body faculty, they but tease.
It is Love itself that these fancies seek to invoke;
But Love is more than just hub, wheel and spoke,
It is the eternal, unseen, magnet constantly turning,
Drawing back, inevitably, into itself every thing.
Stirring
A simple act of stirring sugar in a cup of tea,
Can it indicate the workings of the Divinity?
This universe both of matter and of spirit,
Is it a whirlpool sucking everything into it?
At its heart is that the still small voice of certainty,
Speaking to a particle like me, how can that be?
A black hole in space that draws all light into it,
Can that end all the doubts that cloud the spirit?
If these matters seem occult and very hard to follow,
Repent, believe and do good, that's enough to know.
My Children
So many children were given to a childless me,
Not a schoolroom but a school became necessary.
I refer of course to this endless, if welcome, poetry.
Behind the topics chosen by You for discussion,
Through words, rhyme, rhythm and association,
There is a deeper and well concealed locution.
That is enough to say! I wont give any more away,
Some things need to be hidden and hidden to stay,
Moments
Moments of pure joy in this life are not of a long duration,
Grab them and squeeze them as you might a fresh mango,
To extract juice from the flesh for its flavourful sensation.
In case you think this is hedonism pure and simple – its not so.
Find the presence of Love's essence in your present situation,
For in loving God there is no limitation, as I know you know.
Love Thoughts
If there is a gap, a space intervening between us two
Into that void let us each dive without any hesitation.
Isn't that the very thing that would-be lovers have to do,
How should Love be in need any further explanation.
Eternal Love will triumph in the end – for it has to,
Transient love or other feelings pass, they must do,
But not the Love whose nature is absolute divinity
That comes to us in the smile of His eternal mercy.
Thoughts that come to me about love and its ways,
Have very little originality and even less novelty,
And I am glad it is like this and their author praise,
For it suggests that they were written in pre-eternity.
Doors
It all depends upon what door you came in through,
As to how you perceive the things happening to you.
If you chose to enter through the door marked Hostility,
Everyone you meet and every situation is your enemy;
Every moment is a battle to conquer yet more territory.
If you came in through the door called Humility instead,
Everyone is better than you, wiser, wittier and better read,
But no one there can get respect for you out of their head.
If you wisely chose the door of Repentance to go through,
Everything you meet inside is challenging you to be true,
But in reality all in there are rooting for God to forgive you.
If you knocked on the door of Patience, and then had to wait,
It is because they are busy inside putting everything straight,
So that Joy, Success and Victory on your every whim can wait.
If you chose the door inscribed, 'Love is one and Love is all',
The bliss and beauty that you find everywhere will never pall,
And everyone inside the room there, in love with you will fall.
Between
The best of expositions, or, for that matter, of poetry,
Connects the vast with the insignificant, intuitively:
The revolving of the cosmos, seemingly high and mighty,
With a spoon stirring some sugar in a simple glass of tea.
It sees, in a blooming rose, the heart's inner expansion;
Or in the moon's oversight of an ocean's constant motion,
Sees the luminous transcendence of the unique Divinity,
Reflected in the shifting forms of His repeated creativity.
But this can be only one aspect of the beautiful story,
For between the two extreme ends of the holy polarity,
Between the infinite and time bound earthly manifestations,
Lies the energy that can give life to the Word's expressions.
Love is the essence that unites Word with that life-force,
Into the maelstrom of desire the lover dives, of course.
The universal desires that in the particular it is manifest,
The particular seeks by that universality to be blessed.
Fine as a single hair of the Beloved's head is the thread
Uniting an illumined palace with a humble garden shed,
Or a lamp in a niche with the light of heaven and earth,
Or the fulfilment of a desire, with the act of giving birth.
A gate to a pretty garden can open on to a paradise,
For the one who with longing has paid the entry price.
Narrow is the path from the mundane land of normality,
Up to the great unseen plain, whose substance is divinity.
Longing
Longing is loving, whilst here it is unfulfilled;
By ardent longing our soul’s heart is fuelled.
The fulfilment that we desire so immediately,
Is really the divine beloved making us ready.
We are prepared in the suite of repentance,
By those we served before without reluctance.
We are bathed first in the milk of patience,
Dressed in the finery of solitude and silence,
And decorated with the jewels we suffered for.
Then groomed by our compassion for the poor.
Our conscious mind however asks, simply,
Is all this fuss really an absolute necessity?
But when the Beloved opens to us the door,
We forget all that seemed hard to us before.
Maybe you thought the Beloved was somebody,
Surprise! That One is nobody and yet everybody.
Boredom
“There is nothing to do!” is a thought that we must slay,
It is forgetfulness that life is precious and slipping away.
If ordinary duties are done then it is a fine chance to pray,
Or to pursue the path to His pleasure in some other way.
To beat the big beast of boredom requires great skill I say;
Listen to the heart at least, so that this life you don't betray.
The aim is not to totally destroy the brute but to make it obey,
For like every other undesirable feeling it has its part to play.
Anger, lust, greed, envy, fear and so on, we don't have to slay,
To find the pearl of divine purpose in their existence is the way.
A dragon guards each pearl, so this is not merely child's play.
Conquest of boredom's kingdom is part of purifying our clay,
“What can one do in paradise?” is what some deluded folk say,
“It must be boring once the initial pleasure has passed away”.
But paradise is when with boredom, as with a pet, we can play.
Counting Blessings
There was a time when, merely for amusement,
I counted the poems that to me you had sent.
They are so many now, it requires much labour,
But your blessings it is impossible to number.
Morning Thoughts
Thoughts tumble, tripping over each other,
They need a much better sense of order,
If they are to be in a suitable condition
To be presented as an earnest petition.
What I mean, O Lord of the Daybreak,
Is help me to listen, for your friend's sake,
to the wise advice the unseen has to offer.
Hear and obey, O thoughts, or I will suffer.
Gently, gently, gather yourself all together,
And with a single voice your salaams offer;
Make peace with yourself and every other.
Reality
Want to get a sense of what we mean by reality?
Stand in the chamber of a trillion mirrors and see,
How every action you make is reflected endlessly,
Though each mirror has its own singular quality,
What they reflect depends on your action only.
You and the mirrors are real; is the rest illusory?
History
Don't stand in the way of history, if you can help it,
It rolls across the plains like a vast invading army,
Or a swarm of locusts, destroying all that's before it.
Don't try to oppose what has the scent of destiny;
Like a wise Tom Bombadillo* stand apart if you can.
See the power games being played out before you;
And if you want the best from your allotted life span,
Pray that history passes by a humble one like you.
The battle you need to fight is the one in your mind,
And in your heart too, if you want the taste of victory.
That conquest, if you gain it, last forever you will find,
Whilst the gains and losses of the world's insanity,
Are soon reversed, and like the ever shifting sands,
Of a desert, change the contours of the land frequently.
Concentrate on the business that is in your own hands,
Make a stand against the evil in you – now that is bravery,
* a character in Tokien's book, "Lord of the Rings"
Wealth Indeed
With riches in this world - pray what have I to do?
With wealth in the hereafter - say what have I to do?
In living or in dying, the only wealth worth having,
Is the imperishable treasure of forever loving You.
Love Travel
The love in your eyes carried me many a mile,
I journeyed further with the joy in your smile,
But it was with the song you sang in my ear,
That finally I arrived and found myself - here.
Adulation
Adulation is a potent poison I think,
One full of self should not drink;
But for one who knows Your secret ways,
It is nothing but a funny fizzy drink.
Turning point
From selfish desires and from self satisfaction,
You turned away with a great determination,
To seek a better way to live, another mode of being.
This starts when you realise giving is truly getting,
Then you find your appetite for passing pleasures,
Gives way to an insatiable need for love’s pure treasure.
This is a bliss you can’t measure or count in any way,
But you can pray, “O Lord, like this forever let me stay”
More Wine
More and more wine you keep sending my way,
Are you trying to get me drunk again today,
Just when I think I have reached my limit,
You take my glass and pour more wine in it.
Moments
Moments of joy come along – praise be,
One such moment came happily to me,
A walk in the rain that made me delirious,
Moments pass but some joys stay with us.
Hidden
Time and space try to hide your ever present reality,
Form and shape try to conceal your shining beauty;
They do their best you must give them credit for that,
But it is as vain as the sun trying to wear a straw hat.
Your Song
With the song you sang so softly in my ear, that day,
You parted the veil of my heart in your sweet shy way.
So many idols everywhere may be beautiful like you,
They are sweet faced its true, but this they cannot do.
Ready?
Are you ready to be a lover as you seem to desire,
Ready to have your heart, brain and liver set on fire?
This is only possible if it is written in your destiny,
If so, my dear, approach your fortune, but go gently.
The whirlpool is for those who are completely pure,
Scrub that heart clean again and be completely sure.
Then, when you are ready, enter the sea of certainty,
And be free from pernicious doubt and insincerity.
Celebration
I felt the muse’s presence turning passion into poetry,
Sensual musing into a sea of sound sense and sagacity.
Your sighs and solicitous eyes, sent to ruin my sanity,
She sang of as if it were celebrating virtues and sobriety.
So there is now good reason to throw a drunken party,
How else, but with you and wine, to mark my muse’s victory?
Game
If there is a way in which to play the love game well,
I know, beloved, this secret in words you will not tell.
For all the contempt your look and posture show, yet,
I will prise open that hard shell till the pearl I get.
Supermarket
A supermarket does not strike one as a place that is holy,
Yet when you are present everywhere why should it not be?
The aisles are full of busy people hunting some new delicacy,
The way you are seeking some sweet soul to save constantly.
Without
Words without love are shells without pearls,
Thoughts without passion are boys without girls,
Time without you is a missed opportunity,
Mevlana without Shems, an impossibility.
Best
Love sang this little song to me,
‘Be very wary of my insanity’,
I heard those words with interest,
But still I say, I take love as best.
recent Zahuri poetry page 6 Oct 2015
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